Baidu and Geely jointly empowered the "latecomers" Jidu Automobile to catch up

Reporter Yang Rangchen Zhang Jiazhen reported from Shanghai

Crowded car-making tracks are constantly flooding with new "seed players."

On January 18, 2022, the "Jidu JiDU" brand under Jidu Automobile Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Jidu Automobile") was officially released, and the brand logo of Jidu Automobile Robot "Pixel-J" was also officially born, which symbolizes the entrance to the future, with "pixel" as the elementary particle, conveying the new connection between man and machine and the future.

It is understood that Jidu Automobile is an automotive robot start-up company jointly funded by Beijing Baidu Netcom Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Baidu") and Geely Holding Group (hereinafter referred to as "Geely"). Geely previously said in an interview with the media that this cooperation is not a traditional OEM model, and the company is responsible for providing engineering technical support in the process of R&D and manufacturing of Jidu Automobile.

For product research and development progress and mass production delivery plans and other related issues, Jidu Automobile said in an interview with China Business Daily a few days ago: "The first automotive robot is currently in the research and development process, and in accordance with the development progress formulated by the company. The first automotive robot concept car will be unveiled at the Beijing Auto Show in April 2022 and will be delivered in mass production in 2023. ”

Hurry up and build a team

The reporter combed and found that speed and efficiency are becoming keywords throughout the development of Jidu automobile.

On January 19, 2022, Jidu Automobile announced some of the product design styles of its automotive robot concept car, and officially released a brand visual system tailored for automotive robots, including the industry's first automotive robot brand logo "Pixel-J", color and font. This is also the first time that Jidu Automobile has disclosed design-related content since its establishment in March 2021.

The relevant person in charge of Jidu Automobile told reporters that at present, the company's self-developed SIMU Car (Software Integration Simulation Prototype) has been based on the "software weekly change" method, successfully integrating high-speed and urban dual-domain intelligent driving functions. "Software development at SIMU Car is a dynamic and continuous process, and the company will gradually announce the latest developments of the product to the market."

As a "latecomer" to the car-making track, Jidu Automobile must catch up with it in order to strike up later. Recruiting and buying teams, quickly entering the model development and design links have also become the company's basic actions.

According to Xia Yiping, CEO of Jidu Automobile, at a media communication meeting held in April 2021, the core team of Jidu Automobile had only 100 formal employees at that time. Xia Yiping said that it is expected that by the end of 2022, the core team size of Jidu Automobile will expand to 2500 to 3000 people.

It is understood that since the second half of 2021, Jidu Automobile has attracted a number of experienced "veterans" to join. For example, Xu Hua, former general manager of Geely Lynk & Co Brand Quality Center, joined Jidu Automobile in July 2021 as Vice President of Quality and Supply Chain. Xu Hua was responsible for geely's multi-platform model policy and development quality control and mass production quality improvement, and led the establishment of the supply chain quality engineering center.

In addition to Xu Hua, Jidu Automobile also hired Frank Wu, a Chinese-American, to lead the design studio. Frank Wu spent seven years at GM and led the design of the Cadillac CT6 model, and in 2017, he joined the BAIC design team to lead the design and development of many new models such as the C41, C62 and C71.

In addition, in November 2011, Zhu Jiang, former chief operating officer of Ford Motor (China) Electric Vehicle Division, joined Jidu Automobile and served as vice president and head of user development and operation of Jidu Automobile, responsible for building marketing, channel and after-sales marketing systems.

In addition to the introduction of experienced management, Jidu Automobile is also building a working team. According to the information of relevant recruitment websites, Jidu Automobile is currently recruiting staff such as product marketing managers and content operation experts.

In this regard, Jidu Automobile said in response to reporters that Jidu Automobile is born with the gene of attracting talents, and the management is basically the leader of the industry in which it was originally located, and with their influence, it can attract talents. On the other hand, Jidu Automobile's corporate culture of efficiency, innovation and altruism is also very attractive, and every employee is not a "screw" on the "big machine", but a like-minded partner who starts a business together.

Auto analyst Ren Wanfu told reporters that Jidu Automobile hopes to achieve rapid development by building team talents and obtaining capital support from a high starting point, and also hopes to make the brand tone better through talent advantages.

Build an intelligent supply chain system

In addition to recruiting and quickly forming a team, Jidu Automobile is also frequent in building an intelligent supply chain system.

According to relevant media reports, Jidu Automobile has recently announced that it is equipped with Nvidia orin chips and has reached a cooperation intention with Qualcomm in the smart cockpit. Jidu Automobile said that its first mass production car will use Qualcomm SA8295P chip.

The relevant person in charge of Jidu Automobile told reporters: "The company's intelligent supply chain system has begun to take shape, including many international top intelligent technology companies such as Qualcomm, Nvidia and Continental Group have signed contracts, bosch and ZF and other international top technology companies are in technical exchanges and business negotiations, and related cooperation matters will be gradually announced to the market." ”

On August 6, 2021, Jidu Automobile and Continental signed a strategic cooperation agreement, in which the two sides will give full play to their respective technological and resource advantages to cooperate closely in the fields of intelligent electric vehicles, intelligent networking and automated driving. Based on the agreement, Jidu Automobile and Continental will form a comprehensive and efficient technical alliance to jointly explore and practice innovative business models, accelerate the landing of Jidu Automobile's products, create comprehensive, systematic and reliable solutions, and jointly promote ecological construction and industry development.

According to reports, the cooperation between Jidu Automobile and parts suppliers is different from the traditional OEM (fixed-point production) model, in addition to building an intelligent supply chain system, the company also hopes to empower Tier1 (first-tier suppliers) to develop epoch-making products through software-level logic or architecture iteration.

Among the two major shareholders of Jidu Automobile, Baidu also provides many technical blessings. According to the "Beijing Autonomous Vehicle Road Test Report (2020)", from 2018 to 2020, Baidu has led the way in four dimensions: the number of general technology test vehicles, the number of manned test vehicles, the number of unmanned test vehicles and the number of test miles. Among them, Baidu's test mileage has exceeded 1.12 million kilometers.

According to the list of self-driving competitiveness released by the US research agency Guidehouse in April 2021, Baidu's Apollo has jumped from the third camp to the first camp, ranking second only to Google's Waymo, Ford's Cruise and Intel's Mobileye, and has been a leader for two consecutive years.

On the other hand, Geely is not just a simple traditional OEM. According to relevant people on the Geely side, Geely is not playing a "tool man" in automobile manufacturing, but a strategic partner who provides engineering technical support for Jidu.

Xia Yiping also said in an interview with the media that there is a big difference between the cooperation between the two sides and the traditional FOUNDry model. "The cooperation between Baidu and Geely is felt to be an OEM model outside, but it is not at all, and the two sides are very open to cooperation." In addition to the vast architecture is a very advanced and open platform, there are more measures of cooperation with Geely. ”

"Using Geely's supply chain capabilities, it can solve the problem of suppliers' willingness to cooperate and cost very well, and Geely also guarantees the quality of products." Xia Yiping said that the two sides adhere to the concept of win-win in cooperation, Baidu uses Geely's advantages, and Geely also shares Baidu's capabilities and experience in intelligence.

Automotive robots "self-growth"

An interesting phenomenon is that, unlike other "new car-making forces", Jidu Automobile uses more of a title of "car robot" in its automotive product introduction.

In this regard, Jidu Automobile said in response to reporters that the biggest difference between Jidu Automobile's products and competitors in the industry is that "the company is committed to the research and development and popularization of the world's top automatic driving and human-computer interaction technology, creating a revolutionary car robot with emotion and wisdom, and giving people more space and time to achieve more possibilities." ”

In other words, Jidu Auto's products are not traditional means of transportation, but more intelligent and intelligent interactive robots.

"Automotive robots run through the three major product concepts of free movement, natural communication and self-growth." Jidu Automobile said that the car robot has L4 level automatic driving capabilities, which can achieve free movement; the car robot can accurately identify the human-vehicle interaction and speech semantics, so that the car and the person can "naturally communicate", understand the user's emotions, and respond to the user's needs in real time; the car robot can carry out self-learning and iteration according to the user's usage habits, continuously optimize the automatic driving and intelligent cockpit experience, and achieve "self-growth".

"This means that the interaction between the car and the person will be like a friend face-to-face communication, can understand the user's emotions, respond to the user's needs in real time, and is a close and intelligent partner." Jidu automobile further indicated.

In addition to the intelligence of products, Jidu Automobile also pays more attention to user needs. Xia Yiping previously said in an interview with the media: "In essence, Jidu Automobile is guided by user needs for product research and development, from the appearance design of the product, the definition of user needs to the definition of all functions in the car are completed by Jidu Automobile. ”

"All aspects of Jidu automotive products are developed in accordance with the user's demand for future intelligent cars and technology products, so as to achieve many functions that meet the future travel mode, such as high-level automatic driving, human-computer interaction and entertainment functions in the cockpit." The relevant person in charge of Jidu Automobile told reporters that at the same time, the company also takes into account the continuous improvement of users' demand for technology products, and provides SOTA (software upgrade) and FOTA (full vehicle upgrade) services.